I'm Over-The-Top!

I’ve come to accept and like the fact that I’m over-the-top.  No stone unturned.  If there’s something I begin to explore, I go at it full-throttle.  It’s the Aries in me, I suppose.  Or the Irish.

When we discovered our child was incubating in my belly, it hit home how important it was to examine what I was putting in and on my body.  It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a clue about general nutrition, because I did.  I tried to steer away from transfats, didn’t smoke, ate mostly home-cooked food with lots of fruits and veggies… you know, the standard health guidelines.  But something about creating a new being… all fresh and perfect…made me look deeper. 

 I became hyper-sensitive to it all!  BPA in our water pipes, our food containers, our everything.  Parabens &  Sodium Laurel Sulfates in our shampoo.  Amonia & formaldehyde in “beauty” products.  Oxybenzone in sunscreen.  Intrinsic and residual pesticides on our produce.  GMO Soy and corn in everything! Antibiotics and hormones in meat and milk products.  Chlorine in everything.  And don’t even get me started on what doctors tell you to put in your body!!  The more I dug, the more I found, and the more determined I was to clean-up my body and my environment that our new child was entering.  It’s been a long road, and we are by no means clean to the bone, but we are closer to living a "clean" life than before.

My latest over-the-top is that I’ve stopped using shampoo & conditioner, face cleaners, face moisturizer and toothpaste.  Yes toothpaste.  In place of my nicey-nice earth-friendly products (that are mass produced in factories and come in plastic containers…) I am using a tonic of baking soda & water in place of shampoo, apple-cider vinegar in place of conditioner, castor oil & olive oil as a face cleaner/moisturizer and a slurry of baking soda & hydrogen peroxide for tooth brushing.  I buy all of these items in bulk, and they are single-ingredient-whole items, so somehow that seems better to me.  The results?  Well, here are a couple of photos for you to view… hair and face are 2 months into my ritual and I love the results! New oral hygiene for one week and I love it too!  Clean and bright!